Canada has no trouble with France second time around

KOSICE, Slovakia — Team Canada’s gaudy offensive output is hardly a rarity in the first round of an IIHF world hockey championship — in fact it’s old hat for head coach Ken Hitchcock.

Which isn’t to suggest it’s about to get old. It’s quite likely to get far more interesting now that Belarus and France have been dispatched by 4-1 and 9-1 counts and the perennial pains in the arsenal from Switzerland are on the horizon.

But Hitchcock looks at the offensive options on his bench — Rick Nash, Jeff Skinner, John Tavares, Jordan Eberle, Jason Spezza to name a few — and likes their chances.

“I think when you come over here and you’ve got the ability to score goals, you’re never out of the game. Up front, we’re a team right now that has a lot of fun pressing the attack. We’ve got kind of an identity that has formed within our hockey club that we’re not afraid to try things. We’re not afraid to play,” said Hitchcock, whose 2008 Team Canada scored 17 times in three preliminary round wins in Halifax.

“When we get going, we get tromping, we have the ability to score goals. We’re a fun group to coach. We want to encourage proper play but we want people to hang onto the puck and make plays.”

They made so many so fast at Steel Arena on Sunday that Cristobal Huet was chased from the French net after giving up three goals on 15 first-period shots and Team France eventually caved under the attack. Canada was clearly toying with them at the end, revelling in the chance to fill the net behind reliever Fabrice L’Henry. Huet starred for France last week in an exhibition game against Canada, which the Canadians barely won 3-2.

“We look like we’ve got a team with the hunger to score goals,” said Hitchcock.

They obviously won’t be sated by two easy wins over teams that will settle at or near the bottom of the 16-team standings. Skinner leads the pack with three goals, including one on a third-period penalty shot against the French. Eberle potted a pair against Belarus and there are eight more Canadians with one snipe apiece.

“When goal scorers are scoring, it’s a good sign, you know,” said defenceman Marc-Andre Gragnani whose first shot as a member of Team Canada beat Huet for a 1-0 lead. “Best way to start your Canada career I guess. I mean, I played under-18s but this is a whole new level. Regardless who the opposition team is, a goal is still a goal and it gives us a lot of confidence going forward through the tournament.”

After an initial trading of mad rushes up and down the ice and a flurry of scrambles in front of both nets, the Canadians went through Team France like Bordeaux through a sieve. Though there isn’t always a lesson to be learned from a rout like that against a team perhaps destined for relegation, Gragnani managed to find one.

“It was 4-1, 5-1, we could have easily stopped playing. We didn’t change the way we played and that says a lot about this team.”

There is no arguing its desire to go to the net so far. They threw 15 shots at Huet, then 24 at L’Henry. They love to move the puck around and are skilled enough to do it, top to bottom. Hitchcock loved the instant chemistry between Nash and James Neal, who jumped off a plane from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis, Amsterdam and Prague, and right into the action on the de facto first line. He thinks the Skinner/Tavares/Chris Stewart line was their best again and it produced goals from Stewart and two from Skinner, one on the first penalty shot goal in Team Canada history. Hitchcock got a goal from each of the other two units, as well as three defencemen.

“We make plays off the rush, we make plays off the cycle,” said Hitchcock. “We’re not encouraging the high-risk stuff that at times happens but it’s kind of the balance, you know.”

There is balance here that didn’t necessarily show itself the last time Hitchcock was in charge of the bench. When Team Canada fired its cannons in Halifax, the battery was manned most often by the trio of Nash, Ryan Getzlaf and Dany Heatley. So Hitchcock is getting a different look from this group.

“We’ve got a lot of 20-goal scorers,” said Nash. “Pretty much everybody on every line can score. We’re not really a team with a checking line, shutdown line, goal scoring line. We need all four lines to do all things. We struggled to score a bit in exhibition. We came through tonight. It was just a matter of getting traffic in front of the goalies and going to the net.”

Through the first nine Canadian goals of this tournament he was held off the scoresheet, then assisted on the 6-1 goal by Brent Burns Sunday and popped the 7-1 marker himself. It gave him 41 points in his Team Canada career, good for second all-time behind Heatley.

“Even getting a chance to play with Team Canada, it’s special,” he said. “To have a little bit of success and get a lot of points, it’s fun, but the gold medal and the two silver medals mean a lot more than the points.”

The Canadians went on to score 31 more goals in six more games in 2008 but settled for silver, beaten in overtime in the final by the Russians. There is plenty of work left to be done here and the Canadians will have to clamp down a bit, even as they maintain their scoring pace, to get it done.

“What’s happening is, all our odd-man rushes (against) are early in the game when the game is just so revved up and everybody is so emotional. And then as it calms down we seem to get better and better with it,” said Hitchcock. “We got swept up in the speed of the game and started trading chances.”

Pierre Edouard Bellemare was the only goal scorer for France, making it 3-1 in the second period and briefly offering resistance to a dominant Canadian attack.

“Obviously the talent and depth of the Canadian team was too much for us today,” said French coach Dave Henderson.

In keeping with the form the French forwards showed against Switzerland, their speed generated a few odd-man rushes and Canadian goalie James Reimer stared down some great scoring chances. He made 22 saves and handed a 7-1 lead to reliever Devan Dubnyk with just over 13 minutes to play. Team Canada is going back to an ever-smiling Reimer for a third straight game against the Swiss on Tuesday. Hey, there is nothing like run support to keep the starter happy.